Survival is not life........

Survival is not life.
Survival is a necessity--to exist in the material world is a necessity--but the end is always to come to a flowering of the potential, of all that is meant by you. If you are fulfilled completely, if nothing remains inside in seed form, if everything becomes actual, if you are a flowering, then and only then can you feel the bliss, the ecstasy of life. The denied part of you, the unconscious part, can become active and creative only if you add a new dimension to your life--the dimension of the festive, the dimension of play.
So meditation is not a work, it is a play. Praying is not a business, it is a play. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal--peace, bliss--but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself. The festive dimension is the most important thing to be understood--and we have lost it totally. By festive, I mean the capacity to enjoy, moment to moment, all that comes to you.
We have become so conditioned and habits have become so mechanical that even when there is no business to be done, our minds are businesslike. When no narrowing is needed, you are narrowed. Even when you are playing, you are not playing, you are not enjoying it. Even when you are playing cards, you are not enjoying it. You play for the victory and then the play becomes a work; then what is going on is not important, only the result. In business the result is important. In festivity, the act is important. If you can make any act significant in itself, then you become festive and you can celebrate it. Whenever you are in celebration, the limits, the narrowing limits are broken. They are not needed, they are thrown. You come out of your straitjacket, the narrowing jacket of concentration. Now you are not choosing; everything that comes, you allow. And the moment you allow the total existence to come in, you become one with it. There is a communion. This communion--this celebration, this choiceless awareness, this nonbusinesslike attitude--I call meditation.
The festivity is in the moment, in the act, not in the bothering about the results, not in achieving something. There is nothing to be achieved, so you can enjoy that which is here and now. My definition of meditation is that it is simply an effort to jump into the unconscious. You cannot jump by calculation because all calculation is of the conscious and the conscious mind will not allow it. It will caution: "You will go mad. Do not do it." The conscious mind is always afraid of the unconscious because if the unconscious emerges, all that is calm and clear in the conscious will be swept away. Then everything will be dark, as in a forest. It is like this: you have made a garden, a garden with a boundary. Very little ground has been cleared, but you have planted some flowers and everything is okay--ordered, clear. Only, the forest is always nearby. It is unruly, uncontrollable, and the garden is in constant fear of it. At any moment the forest can enter and then the garden will disappear. In the same way, you have cultivated a part of your mind. You have made everything clear. But the unconscious is always around, and the conscious mind is always in fear of it. The conscious mind says, "Don't go into the unconscious. Don't look at it, don't think about it." The path of the unconscious is dark and unknown. To reason, it will look irrational; to logic, it will look illogical. So if you think in order to go into meditation, you will never go--because the thinking part will not allow you to. This becomes a dilemma. You cannot do anything without thinking, and with thinking you cannot go into meditation. What to do? Even if you think, "I am not going to think," this is also thinking. It is the thinking part of the mind that is saying, "I shall not allow thinking." Meditation cannot be done by thinking; this is the dilemma--the greatest dilemma. Every seeker will have to come to this dilemma; somewhere, sometime, the dilemma will be there. Those who know say, "Jump! Do not think!" But you cannot do anything without thinking. That is why unnecessary devices have been created--I say unnecessary devices, because if you jump without thinking, no device is needed. But you cannot jump without thinking, so a device is needed. You can think about the device, your thinking mind can be put at ease about the device, but not about meditation. Meditation will be a jump into the unknown. You can work with a device and the device will automatically push you into the unknown. The device is necessary only because of the training of the mind; otherwise, it is not needed. Once you have jumped you will say, "The device was not necessary, it was not needed." But this is a retrospective knowing; you will know afterward that the device was not needed. That is what Krishnamurti is saying: "No device is needed; no method is needed." The Zen teachers are saying, "No effort is needed; it is effortless." But this is absurd for one who has not crossed the barrier. And one is mainly talking with those who have not crossed the barrier. So I say that a device is artificial. It is just a trick to put your rational mind at ease so that you can be pushed into the unknown. That is why I use vigorous methods. The more vigorous the method, the less your calculative mind will be needed. The more vigorous it becomes, the more total, because vitality is not only of the mind--it is of the body, of the emotions. It is of your full being…….
Society creates a narrowed consciousness, but consciousness itself means expansion; it is unlimited. Both are needs, and both should be fulfilled. I call a person wise who can fulfill both needs. Either extreme is unwise; either extreme is harmful. So live in the world with the mind, with your conditioning, but live with yourself without mind, without training. Use your mind as a means, do not make it an end; come out of it the moment you have the opportunity. The moment you are alone, come out of it, take it off. Then celebrate the moment; celebrate the existence itself, being itself. Just to be is such a great celebration if you know how to take the conditioning off. This "taking off" you will learn through Dynamic Meditation. It will not be caused; it will come to you uncaused. Meditation will create a situation in which you will come to the unknown; by and by you will be pushed from your habitual, mechanical, robotlike personality. Be courageous: practice Dynamic Meditation vigorously and all else will follow. It will not be your doing, it will be a happening. You cannot bring the divine, but you can hinder its coming. You cannot bring the sun into the house, but you can close the door. Negatively, mind can do much; positively, nothing. Everything positive is a gift, everything positive is a blessing; it comes to you, while everything negative is your own doing. Meditation, and all meditation devices, can do one thing: push you away from your negative hindrances. It can bring you out of the imprisonment that is the mind, and when you have come out you will laugh. It was so easy to come out, it was right there. Only one step was needed. But we go on in a circle and the one step is always missed... the one step that can bring you to the center. You go on in a circle on the periphery, repeating the same thing; somewhere the continuity must be broken. That is all that can be done by any meditation method. If the continuity is broken, if you become discontinuous with your past, then that very moment is the explosion! In that very moment you are centered, centered in your being, and then you know all that has always been yours, all that has just been awaiting you.